Erik Haugen @ech@qoto.org

@artemesia @georgetakei Additionally, taking somebody off the ballot for a crime for which they were not convicted is a bad look. Op's position really needs to maintain the high road in order to be legitimate.

@Paulos_the_fog "This is not a war; this is a punishment beating pure and simple!" But then what is the alternative; what would they be doing differently if their goal was truly and purely just to make sure that Hamas could not do this sort of thing again? (Hamas has said they intend to, for whatever that is worth.) My point is that I think they'd be doing the same thing they're doing now.

On some level, who cares their actual intent; that's kind of a category error anyway.

Your point remains though about worms turning. This is yet another reason they really need to do this with minimal casualties, at least.

@Paulos_the_fog IMO the implied argument here is valid: if one group is being oppressed by the other enough, and the power imbalance is skewed enough that action against military targets is hopeless, then the oppressed group maybe is justified in hitting soft targets, for lack of any other choice. In other words, terrorism.

Comparisons are regularly made between John Brown (Harper's Ferry/Bleeding Kansas/etc) and October 7, to illustrate the point. (Or Nat Turner.) Although I think this comparison with Brown is obviously problematic for a variety of reasons, there's a point here. I think a lot of Hamas' detractors aren't willing to consider and acknowledge this obvious truth.

Here's the thing, though: you need to prove that level of oppression. Here, it's worth noting that the IDF had withdrawn from Gaza decades earlier; I think it's reasonable to color most or all of their action, in Gaza at least, since then, as reactive. It's true that Egypt and Israel restrict trade into Gaza, for example, but it's worth considering *why* Egypt and Israel do this. There are, as I understand them, serious concerns about due process (e.g. the bulldozing of the house of an estranged wife of a suicide bomber), and concerns about things like the IDF/police not stopping settler violence aggressively enough, etc: I mean, I'm not saying Israel is pure and flawless, not by a long shot.

Ultimately I think we're forced to conclude that John Brown probably would not have killed hundreds of civilians and raped women to death in this context.

There's a separate issue about conducting defensive military operations against Hamas in a way that minimizes civilian casualties; this to me is the interesting question. (Unfortunately there are few choices other than military here, and civilians always pay the price in these kinds of operations; but still – there are ways to make this worse or better.)

@richard_merren @65dBnoise You're totally wrong about "states rights" too. Lots of people like small local government. It's possible to have that opinion and simultaneously condemn slavery. The phrase is used a lot in that other context.

@richard_merren @65dBnoise Point is, the catchphrase isn't just Hamas's. They use it in their charter, but the slogan is older than that and used by others with very different intentions.

I'm sorry for your loss.

@junesim63 So: what should they have done instead? Thunberg and others who make this case don't seem to ever present an alternative to military action when an enemy army slaughters your civilians. I wish there was one.

@richard_merren @65dBnoise The phrase is also used in good faith, though. roll with it.

I don't call for "river to the sea" because I believe it will end in disaster, but I recognize good faith in those who disagree with me.

I am not pretending antisemitism isn't widespread, I don't think anyone said that.

@richard_merren @65dBnoise Or again with Tlaib and the "river to the sea" thing.

Naively believing that a single state one-vote-per-person will work out well for everyone doesn't make you an antisemite.

All this stumbling over each other to be as outraged as possible about things like these is probably not helpful.

@richard_merren @65dBnoise Not me or OP, but here's one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilhan_Omar#Remarks_on_AIPAC_and_American_support_for_Israel

I disagree with Omar on essentially every overton-window question, but it has to be ok to talk about money in politics.

@tzimmer_history Can I get a pointer to Stefanik pushing "extreme, violent antisemitic conspiracy theories"? Thanks

@JamesGleick @washingtonpost I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what they did wrong; weren't they just being ready in case Trump's hail mary lawsuits or whatever worked? Did they commit perjury or something in doing so; is that the problem?

It feels like an example of the broader theme of describing things that obviously have 0 chance of illegally effecting a coup or something as conspiracies, instead of a more, shall we say, parsimonious explanation. As if you can sort of sneak into the "electoral college" and vote for the wrong person and have that work somehow. 😂

@freemo In a recent episode of Fargo, someone fired a gun a few times right by someone's ear. Shortly afterward, it showed blood coming out of his ear; I'm not 100% sure how realistic that is but I appreciated the effort.

@vidar @Benhm3 @pluralistic Yeah, I think a proper paperclip maximizer needs to be pretty "smart" to be a real problem, good point. (But it probably doesn't matter if it is conscious or not.)

Killer viruses/nanotech, building so many data centers that earth becomes too hot to support life, etc; all the ai doom scenarios I know of seem to require extreme smarts.

Those don't seem like the kind of things that llms are about to do to us.

@vidar @Benhm3 @pluralistic to tie this back to AGI instead of the "consciousness" distraction, you make a good point that these "next-word-predictor programs" are pretty impressive.

But I think I'm convinced by the argument that they aren't the category of things that are going to be able to order up a batch of killer viruses or whatever, though. (But it would be nice to read something making a robust argument for that...)

@Benhm3 @pluralistic With that said, this is one of my favorite takes on the theme. "Spicy autocomplete" is gold.

@vidar @Benhm3 @pluralistic The other problem with the argument is that consciousness isn't the point. The e/acc vs. doomer debate about AI risk of human extinction has nothing to do with consciousness. There is no sense in which the AI doom argument requires the super-intelligent AI to be conscious.

@Benhm3 @pluralistic Doctorow knows very well that there's like thousands of articles already that make this same point. (humanity's extinction isn't the threat, it's climate/racism/capitalism/whatever.)

Why do so many people write this same article? Is it like a standard essay where everyone tries to write the best version, or put their own spin on it?